It's not stigma; it's just politics.

Of course Eric Ng'eno is right: Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are yet to be convicted by the ICC for the crimes they have been accused of (Stop stigma against ICC suspects, Sunday Nation, Sunday, December 16, 2012). But Mr Ng'eno ignores an iron law of politics: victory is not given to the one with the most persuasive argument, victory is taken by the one who persuades the largest number of voters to elect him. It is that simple. The ICC narrative is going to form part of the campaign. Indeed, since Luis Moreno-Ocampo named his six suspects, it is all that politicians from across the divide have focussed on. Messrs Kenyatta and Ruto may be innocent, but by having their names linked to Kenya's worst political, legal and humanitarian crisis in a decade, it was inevitable that their political ambitions would be shaped by how the ICC narrative unfolded.

On one ground, their supporters have it right. There is nothing in law that stops the two from pursuing their political ambitions. If they wish to put themselves forward for elective positions in 2013, the law is on their side. It has always been on their side and for this reason I suspect, the Vice-President and Prime Minister will not call for the two to postpone their presidential ambitions until the ICC matter is resolved. The arguments advanced by their opponents are opportunistic, and this too was to be expected. When the Committee of Experts inserted Chapter Six on leadership and integrity onto the Constitution, the die was cast and it was going to be used by political actors as a weapon to either protect their interests or to keep some from the ballot.

The legal arguments are only of interests to the two main suspects. The rest of the country sees only the political angle, and this is how a free democracy operates. Love them or not, the two suspects must now fight their battles on two fronts: they must seek to prove their innocence at The Hague and they must ensure that their alliance forms the next government, that is, Jubilee must not only form the majority in Parliament, it must also take the Executive. Whether they will depends on how they shape the debate around their indictments at The Hague. If they keep harping on the unfairness of it all, that they are not the only ones worth the time of the International Criminals Court's judges and that the President and Prime Minister should have been indicted alongside them, they may yet lose the battle. If, instead, they demonstrate that even while co-operating with the Court that they are innocent of the charges, they may yet persuade large numbers of Kenyans to switch allegiances and back their ticket in 2013.

I do not know whether Mr Ng'eno backs the Jubilee ticket or not, but if he wishes to advance it cause, he is best advised to not just concentrate on the finer points of the law or the interpretation of the Constitution, but also advance persuasive arguments that the two men are not just innocent, but the nation would be the poorer without the benefit of their presence either in the Executive or in Parliament. He may begin by retracing their errors regarding the investigations into their crimes. In the run u to their indictments, the two ran with the hares and hunted with the hounds. On the one hand they supported a local tribunal; on the other they allowed their mouthpieces and acolytes to argue that the ICC was the best option. Don't be vague; go to The Hague will forever be remembered as their clarion call for action on the post-election violence. Their miscalculation is not yet fatal; it will be so if the CORD alliance takes both the Executive and Parliament.